Crisis has been coming a long time …

The fear for the Middle East has been that the situation in Syria would spread. After all the uprisings spread and so why should we not see the accumulative impact of years of injustice on Palestine and democratic denial come to a head in the same way. People in the Middle East have had enough. Factions have been exploited and US yes men have been placed in control of the region simply because it suited US interests. This has been the name of the game for decades but now it is as though the whole thing is finished.

We have a staggering nine million Syrians who have had to leave their homes. Over two and a half million have had to flee to neighbouring states. In Lebanon right now one in every four people is a Syrian refugee. Iraq is fairing no better. The health system has never picked up from the sanctions leading up to the total destruction of everything in 2003. Do we in Europe think that the people of the region are not seeing the wipe out of their part of the world? The impoverishment of brutal destruction of the region has been relentless. Did we all think there would be no long-term impact?

Hubris is not just in our leaders. It is in us and the way we have stood by and seen the Middle East be destroyed. Eighty-two percent of the infrastructure in Syria is no more – schools, roads, libraries and clinics have all gone. Electricity supplies are non-existent and clean water can no longer be had in many areas. IMF loans have had to be ‘given’ to Jordan for them to cope with the influx of refugees. Turkey is now at its limit. Yet the discourse is still about should the US go in or should they stay out. This is exactly the same discourse that has produced hundreds of years of offense to the people of the region.

The crisis is not in the Palace of Westminster or on Capital Hill. It is in the way we, ordinary people stand by whilst our brothers and sisters are treated like sub-humans. It is us, again ordinary people who need to stand up to the politicians of our great capitals and say ‘no more’. We just like the Palestinians and the Iraqis and the Syrians are having no more of the old games. We want to see international relations based on respect. We want to see Iraqis and Syrians being given proper respect and we know that unless politicians are called to task right now this is not going to come. Change needs to happen within us and our societies before anything happens in the Middle East. And change is going to come …